old western-ish style Laredo bowie pimpage

[BryFry]

Been messing around with my Laredo some more. This is pretty close to before I started, though I think I had ground out the choil a bit at the time of this photo...

I like this knife a lot, but a couple of things bugged me like: not being able to get my finger into the choil area, the guard stuck out a bit too much on the sides, handle was too slippery and had rather sharp edges.

Also, I decided I wanted it to look more used old timey and stuff, so I ground out the choil and did a patina on the blade with bleach, vinagar, and gun blue....

Then I got out the sandpaper and went to town on the handle. I rounded the edges, then decided to burn a vine pattern into the handle, finished with stain and beeswax...

I perposely never went higher than 120 grit because I didn't want it to be as slippery as before. I made the vine pattern a little rough to also add some much needed grip.

Then I also ground down the sides of the guard to give it a slimmer profile, and to make it all the more comfy when I choke up on the grip to put my finger in the choil...

As you can see I am still messing around with the blade. ...Right now it has a very dark patina, but that may change in the future....

I was kind of trying to make this knife a complimentary set to a CS trailhawk that I modded in a similar fashion, but the wood stain colors didn't quite match up. ...pretty close though...

....Thinking about doing some vine pattern jimping on the spine, ...good idea? ...or too much? ...let me know what you think!

Thanks for looking!

 

[Bill DeShivs]

Nice work. Laminated wood is almost impossible to stain.

 

[BryFry]

I'm not quite sure exactly what faux cocobolo wood is. But it does stain, and it doesn't have the properties of any laminated wood that I've seen.

At least in the sense that it doesn't appear to be just a layer of grained wood covering particle board or compressed wood. Since the grain of the wood continues deep into the handle. This I could tell because I removed quite a bit from the handle and the visible grain remained. Though so did the reddish color, so I'm not sure what that handle is really made of???

 

[Jason B.]

Very nice :thumbup:

 

[Bill DeShivs]

The handle is Pakkawood, Frostwood, wood Micarta, etc. It's made of layers of stained birch that are laminated together. Hence the term "laminated wood." It comes dyed in many different colors. The dyeing or staining is done before the lamination process.

 

[Seals]

That's good looking.

 

[SamIam]

Love what you have done so far. Use it for a while, get some grime and skin oil into it. Then see how much more you want to mess with it. Looks great now!

 

[dramos1]

That's a gorgeous Laredo, I just straight up took the handle off and put a stag on it, I'm definitely going to grind the choil next.